


Pain and Pixie Dust

by faithinthepoor



Series: Once Upon a Time [38]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1284520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Quite a Common Fairy</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pain and Pixie Dust

**Author's Note:**

> In my series this follows my [Fairytale Drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618763), [Mirror Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618771), [This Provincial Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618775), [Viviane or Nimue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618809), [Dreams and Wishes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618851), [All the Better To….](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619484), [Magic Keys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619497), [Curiouser and Curiouser](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619514), [Snow Blind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620280), [Spinning Straw](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620288), [Wooden Hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621128), [Poisoned](http://archiveofourown.org/works/622526), [True Love and Other Curses](http://archiveofourown.org/works/625038), [Spellbound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/628806), [Over the Rainbow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/630076), [Facades](http://archiveofourown.org/works/632227), [Lost Girls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/636939), [Monstrosities](http://archiveofourown.org/works/640162), [Love and Lies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/652912), [Something Wicked this Way Comes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/665458), [Dreamscapes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/672345), [Homecomings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/676052), [Test Match](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682287), [Wishful Thinking](http://archiveofourown.org/works/697330), [Absent Friends](http://archiveofourown.org/works/771482), [Small Mercies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/773663), [State of Mind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/778498), [Good Intentions](http://archiveofourown.org/works/802589), [The Sins of Mothers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/820893), [Affairs of the Heart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/855926), [Power Plays](http://archiveofourown.org/works/942825), [Future Plans](http://archiveofourown.org/works/969035), [Crying Wolf](http://archiveofourown.org/works/982369), [The Eye of the Storm](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1004056), [Doomsday Devices](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1155836), [Villains](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1191873) and [Attachments](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1223896)

She is lying on her side. This is far and away the worst place they have chosen to camp. Cold is seeping through her pores and her clothing is wet where it touches the ground. Her mind is groggy but she can definitely smell the dankness of her surroundings and there is a strange taste in her mouth that troubles her. Nothing about the situation feels right. Even before she manages to open her eyes she knows that she is being held captive, she can tell that her hands are bound together. 

The rope rubs against her skin but she feels no threat, there is no magic in the ties that bind her. She has no memory of how she got here and it would have taken her time to put the pieces together but her captor helps her out by being incredibly inpatient, “About time you woke up. I've been looking forward to this chat for quite some time,” the moth says.

She sighs, this is going to fair more tedious then she would like, “Look, you don't know why I'm here.”

“Oh, I know exactly why you're here. You're trying to find your son.”

“I take it by the restraints, you're not helping.”

“Hell, no. You're the last person I'd ever help, after how you burned me.”

“Burned you?” she asks incredulously. “You're the one who interfered in my life.”

“And threw away my own in the process.”

She never asked for that. She had nothing to do with Tinker Bell’s harebrained plan to steal that dust. The fairy made decisions about her and for her and then held Regina responsible for the outcome. “So what do you want from me? To kill me? You think it's that easy? Whatever you knocked me out with, I can tell it's not magic.” She searches her memory for something that could have put her to sleep like that, “Maybe poppies. But they're wearing off. And since you had to resort to that, it only means one thing; you don't have magic. But I do.” She breaks the binds holding her as a display of her power. 

Tinker Bell matches this with a display of power of her own and Regina finds an arrow pressed to her neck. “Yeah, I know. But even your magic can't stop this. Ever hear of dreamshade?”

“Yes.” Even before their run in with the lost boys she was aware of the substance. During her reign as the Evil Queen she dealt in death, it would have been remiss of her to have been ignorant of such a powerful poison.

“Good.” The woman threatening her life is nothing like the optimistic young fairy she once knew.

“How the hell did you get like this?” Regina asks.

“I met you.” This is what she tried to explain to Emma. This is what she does to people. She ruins them without even trying. She played with dark magic and it didn’t just devour her, it devoured everything she touched. 

“Okay, you wanna kill me? I can make it easier.” She reaches into her chest and rips out her own heart. It’s easier than last time, she doesn’t even hesitate. She has less to live for now than she did then.

“What are,,,,?” Tinker Bell looks as though she can’t believe what is happening before her eyes. 

“You wanna kill me? Oh, don't let the poison do it. You should do it. Go ahead. Crush it!” and on some level she is hoping that Tinker Bell will. Dying, right here, right now, would have a twofold advantage. It would increase the chance that Tinker Bell would be willing to help save Henry and it would mean that Regina would die knowing that Emma still loved her.

“You think I won't take it?” 

“No, I'm counting on it.” The heart thumps away, making its presence known and daring Tinker Bell to grab it. “Show me who you are Tinker Bell.”

“Gladly,” Tinker Bell whispers and takes Regina’s heart in her hand. Tinker Bell squeezes the mass of tissue and Regina feels the empty place in her chest fill with pain. “Do you know what you cost me?”

Realization dawns on Regina, there is a reason that this fairy has no magic, “Your wings.”

“Why? “

“Why what? Why did I hand over my heart?” That much should be obvious, even to this simpleton. She needs to save her son. She has no time for games. Either the pixie is going to help them or she is not and if Regina is the obstacle to Tinker Bell offering aid then Regina will remove herself from the equation. So much has changed, for both of them, but right now she feels exactly the same way she did moments before she first met Tinker Bell. When she stood on that balcony she wasn’t sure she wanted to die but she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to live either. 

“No! Why did you lie? Because I've been over it a million times, and that spell worked! You never went in. It's the only explanation. Why couldn't you just go through that door and meet your soul mate. Was being happy such a terrible fate?”

“Yes,” she admits. Tinker Bell may not deserve the truth but if it will help save Henry then Regina with give it to her. “Yes, it was. You're right. I never went in. I was afraid. I didn't…you said I could let go of the anger that was weighing me down and suddenly it felt like without it, I would just float away. That anger was all I had. What would I be without it?”

“Happy,” Tinker Bell spits, as though that is the cure to everything. As though people get to make that choice.

“Weak,” she counters, and she would have been but are there things worse than being weak. There was a reason that she couldn’t give that anger away. A reason that she opened that door but couldn’t go through. She wasn’t ready to give up her pain because if she gave that up it meant she would have had to give Daniel up too. Everything else was gone but the pain and anger where real and while she still had them, she still had a piece of Daniel.

“And look what good it did you, that _strength_ you gained, cause I'm holding your heart in my hand, and I'm not hearing one reason not to squeeze it into ash.”

Regina isn’t sure that Tinker Bell shouldn’t do just that. Sacrificing herself to save her son seems like the right thing to do but this is the very behaviour that caused her to lose Emma and if she has any hope of fixing things between them she needs to find another way to handle these situations. “All right, you want a reason? Here you go. You think I was afraid? You think I did the wrong thing? Well, fairy, right now you're making the same choice. I picked revenge over hope, and you're holding the result. A small, hard dark heart.” She grabs Tinker Bell’s arm and pulls the heart up between them, the evidence of her bad choices and their lasting effect. “If you make the same choice I did, then what you're looking at is your own future.” It seems something about that sinks in because Tinker Bell snatches the heart back. “I'm not gonna tell you what to do. The choice is yours. Kill me or act like the fairy you are.”

“You said I was a terrible fairy.” Tinker bells whines and that would be the thing that sprite clings too. 

“Well, then prove me wrong. Pick hope over anger. Choose love and help me get my son back.”

“You love your son?” Tinker Bell asks. 

“Very much,” she says and notes with pride that her heart grows brighter when she talks about her him. “With Henry, I finally got something right. Don't you wanna be able to say the same thing?”

“It's too late for me.”

“Only if you kill me.” Regina’s doesn’t believe that, she can’t, because if that’s true then there is no chance for her. She has rivers of blood on her hands. If Tinker Bell was to kill her it would be but a drop compared with Regina’s bloody ocean. Regina needs Tinker Bells to believe she will be damned because the part of her that wants to live, the part of her that screamed when that balcony railing gave way, still isn’t ready to let go. 

“I won't kill you, but I won't help you either. Besides, it's probably too late. He's been with him too long.” 

Tinker Bell thrusts the heart against Regina and she watches as the organ darkens in fear. That darkness is not welcome. That darkness does not help. She thinks about Emma and the darkness starts to fade. More than that she feels warmth inside of her. Her chest is empty, she should feel nothing, but the warmth is definitely there. 

It shouldn’t be possible but as her heart pulses and fills the cavern with light she can feel her love for Henry and Emma. Maybe it’s the magic of Neverland, maybe it’s a by-product of combing her power with Emma’s, but maybe, just maybe, her heart is growing. She is a mess and her heart is aching but it’s not black. It actually looks better than the last time she saw it. It has grown. Her love has grown. _She_ has grown. 

She forces the heart back in her chest and it feels as though she is full to bursting. A feeling that only grows when Emma shows up brandishing a weapon and looking terrified at the thought that someone might have harmed her. She briefly worries that warmth inside of her might literally cause her to explode.

If she had her way she would be alone with Emma right now, thanking her for her support, but instead she finds herself stuck sitting next to Tinker Bell. Three decades later and the fairy is still obsessed with the road not travelled, or rather the door not walked through. What Tinker Bell doesn’t understand is that Regina didn’t walk through that door because she was afraid of love, she stayed outside because she was still in love. 

According to Tinker Bell she ruined two lives by not pursuing the man with the lion tattoo but as she looks across the camp and her eyes settle on golden hair she can’t bring herself to care. True love isn’t something that you should be led to by pixie dust, it should be uncertain. It should be leap of faith. She may not have had the life that she was meant to but with Henry and Emma she found the life that she wanted and she won’t lose it, or them, without a fight.


End file.
